JONATHAN FEIGEN, Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle |
December 13, 2009

TORONTO — Trevor Ariza, finally more frustrated than he could stand, lost the ball to Toronto’s DeMar DeRozan, then angrily threw a forearm in DeRozan’s direction.

Ariza might have meant no harm. By then, he knew he could not hit a thing.

When he was ejected, leaving Air Canada Centre on Sunday without comment but facing the possibility of a one-game suspension, Ariza had missed all nine shots he took, epitomizing the Rockets’ latest collapse in Toronto.

The Rockets showed up far too late to prevent a 101-88 defeat to the Raptors and have lost four of five games in Toronto by an average of 16.9 points.

This one was far from the worst, which says a lot about some of the losses that came before, because the Rockets did not surrender as they did last season. But making a few brief runs to within nine in the fourth quarter did not offer much solace, particularly with the Rockets suffering through their second consecutive horrid start.

“We had a very poor first quarter, and it cost us,” coach Rick Adelman said. “We could never get back from that.

“I thought we played very poor in the first half the whole way.”

The Raptors have done little to slow opposing teams this season, and in the previous three games, they had allowed an average of 114 points on 52.1 percent shooting.

Unable to defend much, the Raptors decided to take away something and loaded up in the lane, fronting Carl Landry and swarming to cut off penetration.

Off the mark

That left the Rockets plenty of open shots but few they could make.

When Pops Mensah-Bonsu, who has played sparingly since rejoining the Raptors, reintroduced himself to the Rockets with a spectacular block of a David Andersen dunk attempt, the Rockets had made eight of 30 shots and trailed by 18 a game after falling behind by 17 early in a win at Philadelphia.

“I don’t know the reason why,” Luis Scola (21 points, 15 rebounds) said of the Rockets’ slow starts on the trip. “I know we can’t afford to start this way. It sounds too repetitive, but we’re not that good. We can’t expect to come out and be down 20 and pick up whenever we want to and come back and win the game. We’re going to lose 95 percent of the games we start this way. If we want to win games, especially on the road, we can’t afford to approach the game this way.”

The Rockets made just one off 11 3s in the first half and missed plenty of open looks from inside the arc, too. They finished the day 3-of-24 from beyond the arc, their worst 3-point-shooting game (12.5 percent) of the season. Their 32-of-87 (32.8 percent) shooting overall was their second worst this season. They had 13 assists, three fewer than their previous season low.

“We got the shots we wanted,” said Aaron Brooks, who had 20 points but made just six of 20 shots. “We got layups. We got 3s.

Defense lax

“Sometimes when we miss shots, we don’t work as hard on defense. Even though we were missing shots, we shouldn’t have given up 30-something points in the first quarter. They worked harder than us. It’s got to pick up.”

Moments after Ariza left the floor, the Raptors pushed their lead to 22, with the Rockets hitting just 18 of 62 shots and one of 17 3s.

But they did finally show some life, finishing the quarter outscoring the Raptors 14-4, and were within nine with 5½ minutes remaining.

Landry scored eight of his 25 points in the fourth quarter — he hit 10 of 13 shots overall — to give the Rockets a slim hope of a second consecutive comeback.

But the Raptors got the ball to Chris Bosh and Hedo Turkoglu — who combined for 50 points — down the stretch to keep the Rockets from getting closer. Kyle Lowry and Brooks missed drives, and Lowry missed a 3 to inspire Adelman to clear his bench with 1:23 left.

“We were down nine,” Brooks said. “A couple more shots, we could have made it a real game.”

Instead, they missed those shots and a couple more, exiting Toronto with another bad loss and maybe one fewer player than they had available when they arrived.